[January 30, 2011]
Dear softrice fan:
The night before, Prima calls me. Discontent to let Honey have all the fun times with me, she is going to brave the snowstorm and fly from Charlotte to see me. Then she will continue on her journey to Boston to visit her uncle, whom recently fell unconscious. My fans and I will gather all our positive energy here and wish him a speedy recovery.
The night of dinner, Prima wakes up just in time to be with me. She freshens up and makes her way to meet in the Meatpacking District. I trained to Union Square and walked towards 10th Avenue. This was easier than thinking of another train to take that would get me closer. Prima was coming from uptown. She called me as both of us were walking towards our destination. We chat warmly in the cold weather, until we finally meet at the Post Office on 15th Street and 9th Avenue.
From a distance, I saw a girl in a black jacket, which blended in well with the darkness, other than a white strip along her zipper line that shines through. On the phone, I ask if this was her, to which Prima responds by tastefully asking why I am looking at her middle. She is wearing a new Orage jacket. This is her first time spending over $200 on a jacket, to keep warm when I am not with her. Prima would have bought ski pants to spread the good temperature to her legs too, but North Carolina is not cold enough. She is postponing that purchase until her full return to New York City, tentatively in August, for now.
I have been in need of a new jacket for a long time, but I have not found one that catches my eyes yet, as the black Spyder jacket that I am wearing now did. Prima feels closer to the poverty line after paying approximately $200 for a jacket. She wonders why I would pay an astronomical $800 for a jacket, as lover and normal people do too. The answer is quite simple. I am worth it. Prima likes my answer and agrees with the assessment. In such a circumstance, I offer her the honor of buying me my next jacket, which will surely be more than $800. I only improve with all things in life.
We continue the rest of our way to morimoto together. Prima was craving for fresh sushi. There is none in Charlotte. I suggest we fly to Japan for the freshest sushi, but she did not bring her passport with her. Otherwise, we would simply hop on a cab and fly straight to the source for the best of what we want. Who says I cannot be spontaneous? It would be fun to share such irresponsible recklessness and financial freedom with lover in the future. Prima and I also want to go to Vancouver, for vacation purposes, but she thinks I have an additional motive – Linda Chung’s family is there.
For the next best alternative for a local satisfaction of Prima’s sushi cravings, I considered Sushi Yasuda, supposedly the best sushi in New York, and Nippon, the first sushi bar in the United States (since 1963). However, they both close on Sundays. The following candidate down the list is Sushi of Gari, whose restaurants are open today, but their menus are basic and lacking the exotic. Whereas the popular Philadelphia transplant, morimoto, has live octopus.
This past week, Honey, Mandy and I have been bouncing back emails at work about the live octopus. Mandy saw someone eating a live, moving octopus. She and Honey both express disgust. I told them that the suckers would taste the same as kissing a boyfriend, even though I have much reservation about swallowing a live octopus as well. Regardless of my fears, one thing is certain – Live octopus generates interest, discussion, and response. I have my story point to tell lover. With such a timely rediscovery of morimoto, I seize the moment and bring Prima here for fresh sashimi.
Years ago, when I first saw the exterior of morimoto, I did not know what to make of it. The trendy Japanese restaurant hides its giganticness behind flowing, plain red banners. You can walk pass this space and think it is nothing, much less know it is morimoto. Its neighbors are more conspicuous. Chelsea Market resides within the same building. The luxurious Colicchio & Sons (I like the name craftsteak better) and Del Posto (it does not deserve four stars from the New York Times) are across the street. The High Line is also a nearby attraction, worthy of a visit.
morimoto
88 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
212.989.8883
www.morimotonyc.com
Prima and I walk into morimoto and ask for a table for two. I knew availability was not an issue coming on a Sunday, so I did not make reservations to allow Prima the flexibility of going somewhere else should she wanted to. The host offers us a table at the sushi bar or downstairs in the basement. I question why we could not have the free tables at the center of the ground floor dining room. The host explains that with my handsomeness in such a spotlight, their female diners would cause a riot worse than Egypt to sit closer to me. To prevent the ensuing chaos, it is better to tuck me in a cozy corner, where I can enjoy my privacy with Prima. I accept his humble honesty and follow a waitress to the right wing of the sushi bar.
At the sushi bar, Prima chooses to sit inside, wherein I take a corner seat closer to the main dining room. Behind me are steel bars that do not fully reach up to the ceiling, so they are for decoration. I do not gain extra moods or an ambiance from this interior design. Yet it does not bother me either. Dining guests already occupy the center seats at the sushi bar, so they have a better view of the kitchen, the fish, and attention of the sushi chefs. Prima and I can see the open kitchen, but we cannot see the preparation of the sushi and sashimi, and we do not have the attention of the sushi chefs. It is fine with me to only jabe with my Prima and not some stranger preparing my food.
Prima scans the scene and reports that they are no pretty girls. There goes the thought of feeding my eyes for the night. Now I have all my concentration focused on Prima and our food. She takes off her jacket and reveals a scarf worn at her neck. The fabric feels like a black sweater, while the appearance is that of a collar, perfectly fitting for her as my kitty cat. Prima reaches over with one hand on my belly and the other on my back. She pushes in with both hands and sizes me up. Her conclusion is that I have gotten fat. Yes, I am in the process of losing weight.
My dining partner is still cold, so she orders a hot tea for her drink. Prima cannot drink wine anyway, or else she will have a headache. Note to self, I need a sexy female wine buddy. Of the tea list, we found the Gen Mai Cha to be the most interesting. It is a traditional Japanese blend of green sencha tea and gunpowder with toasted and popped rice. The gunpowder and toasted and popped rice descriptions most appealed to us. We wonder if she would go bang, bang, bang, after she drinks the tea. I also falsely tell her that the toasted and popped rice would be something like Rice Krispies on top of her green tea. Rice did not come with the tea, but it does have the taste of rice. There is no trace of gunpowder, although we would have no idea what it tastes like if there was. Prima did not blow up, and the tea warmed her up. As such, the Gen Mai Cha was a success.
Our friendly and fair Asian waitress brings for me a glass of Sauternes, from Chateau de Rolland. My understanding waitress did not find it odd that I want to drink dessert wine with my dinner. In fact, she readily pulled out the dessert menu for me to choose from her list. Of the ice wine, Tokaji, ports, and plum sakes, I thought the Sauternes would best suit my sweet tooth for the night. The Sauternes rivals the Tokaji, and is generally sweeter and fuller than the other dessert wines. A drink of the golden liquid later, it falls short of the Sauternes I had at River Cafe, but I am sweetly satisfied nonetheless.
Our first appetizer is the Toro Tartare, with osetra caviar, crème fraiche, wasabi, and dashi-soy. I thought it would be a mixed plate of toro chunks and sauce. Instead, it is a cute presentation of the premium tuna belly. There are two small wooden boards, along with a circular soy sauce holding dish and a green olive, atop a big bowl of ice. The upright wooden board holds a thin layer of creamy pink toro tartare, and a scoop of black caviar. It reminds me of a chalkboard, not for school, but for the doodling of a child’s imaginations.
The next wooden board is a tray of condiments, which reminds me more of a treasure box, neatly organized colors in six columns across. From left to right, the first column is a light green condiment, which is the wasabi. Next is a white crème. Following that is a black sauce. Prima comments on its plum taste, similar to the sweet Chinese seafood sauce, a thicker version of the spread in Peking duck buns. Third from the right are finely chopped green scallions. Next is a sea green avocado condiment. Lastly, the most playful condiment is crispy, petite rice balls. These give the toro tartare an extra pop. We note how morimoto likes the taste of rice in their food, utterly shocking for a sushi restaurant.
I pick up the appetizer bowl and pose for pictures, erstwhile spilling the soy sauce on our bar area. After making an unnecessary mess for a necessary photographic documentary to share with my fans, Prima and I use two metal scrappers to dig into our toro. The utensil is like a shaver, but without the knives. We carefully scrap a small portion of toro tartare onto its flat surface and add random mixes of condiments. I taste the toro tartare and osetra caviar to taste their truest form. The toro tartare is soft and smooth, with a creamy texture, but it does not melt in my mouth as the marketing goes. As for the caviar, it tastes like a thicker roe, which is black instead of orange. Prima and I do not know how to appreciate such delicacies. It is like fine wine. We can taste if the wine suits our palates or not, but we are unable to taste the vanilla, butter, and oak subtleties.
The toro tartare is a fun time. We scrap the pink fish belly, as one would gently shovel snow. Then we dress our food with changing condiments, as one would cross dress Barbie. The two of us make our edibles more colorful than a fashionable doll. Finally, we fill our tummies with this yummy, and hopefully you will not do the same with snow or Barbie dolls. (Beware of the snow-eating monsters!)
We leave the green olive untouched. Prima does not like olives. I do not like olives, and lover does not like olives (but olive her). Poor olive gets no love. There is good reason why we crush them into oil, lest they join forces and become a formidable group of fruit terrorists against the law-abiding vegetables. A waiter removes the olive from our sights (along with our finished appetizer bowl and sharing trays) before it becomes a threatening presence.
The first thing Prima wanted to get after looking at the morimoto menu is the Beef Curry Bread, panko crust. We imagined bread, but this appetizer is really two thick, deep-fried, unhealthy combinations of a sausage and dumpling (form of the prior and texture of the latter). The fillings are more potato chunks than beef, with hints of curry, and minimal meatiness. The experience is similar to dating a girl for her big boobs, but finding out that she was using water pads. Both of us agree that more beef would make this bread taste better. It is still okay with her, because Prima likes potatoes. I want to cup 100% natural breasts, and not water pads.
Our entrees for the night are all on a shared tray of sashimi, two of each for us to share, because we care. Prima dislikes shellfish. She can eat lobster and crab, but does not prefer them. Oysters, clams, and scallops are not prime choices for tonight. For something different other than her usual sushi rolls, I select the Awabi, abalone, for Prima to try. I expected Kanoyama portions, where I would have an entire abalone, but sashimi at morimoto is really by the slices. We have two slices of awabi, sleeping on a slice of lemon mattress. The body of this shellfish is a delicate light brown, while its hairy rim is a dark pussy black.
We ignore the third wheel slice of lemon and taste our awabi. My only other point of reference was Kanoyama, where I expected the morimoto awabi sashimi to be a slice of hard and crunchy abalone. The morimoto version is soft and chewy, like gummy bears without the sweetness of candy. The awabi is essentially tasteless, but it is an exotic food to try at least once in a lifetime. Prima gives me her first and acceptably nibbles the meat of her slice away. The rim is too creepy for her. Since I like munching female muff, it is less weird for me. I finish for her.
One thing Prima refuses to share with me is the Mizudako, live octopus. Prior to seeing it, I was questioning whether I could bring myself to put this in my mouth too. When I was ordering, our waitress quickly pushed my fears over a mental cliff and told me that it does not move. She explained that chefs usually serve octopus cooked, so live octopus is simply raw cephalopod meat. It is not my imaginations of swallowing a live baby octopus with its tentacles crawling down my throat or a thick moving chunk of adult octopus tentacles with suckers intact, wriggling its last movements within my mouth. With those imageries squashed, I felt confident in having the mizudako.
The much-feared mizudako is a disappointing white circle of octopus flesh, uncooked, and therefore more expensive. I eat both slices of the live octopus, exhibiting my manliness before my feminine dining companion. She has never witnessed such bravery before in her entire life! I do not bring shame to my name, nor leave this dinner without a victorious claim. We tried to cut a small piece for Prima to try, but it was too much work with too little motivation. She would not get a taste of the mizudako, and I fail to describe how the live octopus tastes. It is similarly tasteless as the awabi, but with more chewiness. I can describe its other characteristics. The mizudako sashimi looks like an unused condom, and the meat is a milky sperm color. Now every girl wants one in her mouth.
Mizudako actually translates into water octopus. The meat contains high amounts of water, making it tenderer than other octopi. A genius put the two together and came up with the name, water octopus. By the way, the mizudako is the biggest octopus in the world, growing up to 10 feet, and directly imported from Hokkaido, a northern island of Japan. Even though Prima and I did not fly to the source of the freshest sushi, I had a taste of Hokkaido through the live octopus sashimi, and Prima experienced the awesomeness of sharing the moment with me.
I hoped the Anago, sea eel, would be a familiar liking to Prima. Yet this would not be. She prefers regular eel. The anago is bonier, with looser meat. The sea eel crumbles in your mouth before chewing ensures. Its bones may be edible, but it does not come near a palate championship belt. The only old friend of this order is the cucumber shreds.
I worry that Prima is not getting enough likable food to eat. It would have been better if we ordered regular rolls of sushi. I have the urge to order a roll of sushi and maki each, so that Prima can finally know the difference between the two. My presumption is that sushi is a roll with rice on the outside, wherein maki is a thinner roll with seaweed wrapping everything within it, or in the form of a hand roll (an ice cream cone, but with sushi as the ice cream and seaweed as the waffle cone). Prima thinks it is unnecessary to order more food, since we have dessert coming, and she could Google the difference between a sushi and a maki roll at home, without asking our waitress.
We finally get to food that Prima enjoys with the Chu-Toro, medium fatty tuna. The rectangular light pink piece of raw fish belly has marbles of white fat running across its meat. Prima says the chu-toro melts in her mouth. The medium fatty tuna has a beautiful color, like a delightful slice of grapefruit before it is ripe, and has a smooth and creamy finish. However, I do not think my enjoyment justifies its price point at $15 apiece. For such a premium cost, I can exchange it for three regular pieces of tuna at morimoto or three tuna steaks from a fish market. The meat will be an inferior enjoyment by the piece, but I do believe my collective enjoyment will be multiple times the value of one chu-toro. On the other hand, Prima’s happiness from liking her food is priceless.
Our favorite fish of the night is the Kinmedai, golden big eye snapper. This is a Japanese import and not the mass-marketed sashimi in America. It is a winner because I possess another first time experience with Prima, and she actually likes this fish. I score another major victory through the kinmedai. From now on, Prima will remember me and think of softrice whenever she has kinmedai in the future.
Kinmedai tastes better than toro. We are having this fish when it is in season, from the end of December to the end of March, so the white meat contains a lot of fat for our enjoyment. If Prima and I did not eat the golden big eye snapper tonight, the fish could live up to 14 years, a long life span in the undersea world. A kinmedai grows approximately 12 inches in first three years, and can be as big as 24 inches in its adulthood. The name, golden big eye snapper, aptly labels this fish for its distinctive features, including its bright red skin and its pair of large eyes. Kinmedai has enlarged eyes to capture the slightest light, shining through 650 to 2,700 feet deep in the ocean, where this deep-sea fish usually resides. Prima and I will want more sustainable catches of this live treasure from the oceans on our future sashimi adventures.
I remember the waitress at Kanoyama telling me that the kinmedai tastes similar to the kinki. The deliciousness of the kinmedai only strengthens my desire to taste the kinki! In conclusion, morimoto is a grander restaurant to bring a larger group for quality Japanese food, but more so to get drunk and party later on the night. For a better value and more exotic sashimi selections from Japan, I would choose to return to Kanoyama.
I brought Prima to morimoto because I thought she likes sashimi. Prima suggested sashimi because she thought I liked seafood. Both of which are true, but we have been accommodating each other in the wrong ways. I actually would not eat sashimi if not for Prima. When I first ate it with her in Boston, I did not acquire the taste yet. Before then, whenever my mom would bring home a tray of sashimi, I would spit it back out and throw it away. Uncooked fish, like salads, was a stupid concept where you would pay more for a kitchen not to cook your food. Sashimi is still not my preferred choice of food and I do not go out often for it, but I am letting my palate grow. Oysters and wine fall into this category as well. I am okay eating sashimi (and oysters and wine) now, so there is no forcing myself to eat it, unlike Prima has to with her new stuff.
I feel uneasy when my dining companion(s) does not like her food. It means I made a wrong decision. The point of spending time together is to have a fun time. From which, it would be nice to bond and learn something new about each other. Prima says she knows 20% of me, downgraded from 22% after this new knowledge of our wrongful accommodations tonight. I thought we were in the teens, so it is cheerful upgrade from my perspective. Additionally, if it is permissible, I would like someone to grow because of and with me. Experience something new with me. See more of the world because of me.
I started writing softrice because I wanted to show lover (and my fans) the restaurant scene in New York, exposing her to different cuisines, exotic foods, and fabulous spaces. Then I went on to do the same with my travels, nationally and internationally, on right dimple. Lover never had a window in her room growing up. I want to be her window to the world. Hence, the omnipresence in my power set, on godhood. (I will never forget my fans!)
On choosing restaurants, I almost never think about what I want to eat. If you want to know where I want to go to by asking me what I want to eat, you do not know me. I want to go to places with a story to tell lover. I consider the food first. Is the food special, different, or the best of its kind? The location and history of the restaurant are also considerations. What happened here or was it a precedent for something relevant in the present? The question is why I should care about the restaurant, for lover to care about my time there. I do not ask myself what I want to eat.
Of my 87 foodie-adventures, including morimoto, the only successful find is River Cafe. That is one restaurant I was excited to tell lover about and would want to bring her. However, my favorite time out was Esca, which became the most awesome story to write, share, and relive. Which is your favorite softrice story?
Upping the ante of softrice adventures, Prima suggests we go to Peter Luger. She points out that she has never been to a steakhouse in New York and we have never played in Brooklyn before. If Prima has never been to a New York steakhouse, then there is no better place to start than at the very best, with the very best. I like the idea.
I usually shy away from steakhouses, because when I asked lover what restaurants she likes, her only request was no steakhouses. Lover is not a fan of beef. This is not to say I would not go and have not gone to steakhouses. I simply have to find another angle of interest to give the story a hook. I already have mine for Peter Luger.
Newly learning my awesome thought process, Prima continues to list experiences she is lacking in life. No one has ever taken her to a vegetarian restaurant before. She has been neither to a restaurant for Asian mock meats or natural vegetable meals. Our future dinners have found their callings – Peter Luger for steak, Red Bamboo for Asian mock meats, and pure food and wine for natural vegetables.
Green vegetables make Prima happy. I will have to remember this about my dining partner. Prima says she has the taste buds of a five-year old, but I highly doubt a five-year old would be happy with green vegetables or eat sashimi. I say I have the spirit of a five-year old and this is the truth.
Our waitress returns to my side and asks if I will try the Harushika Tokimeki Sparkling Sake. She stresses that the sake is unique. I easily accept her proposal. Prima says our waitress is excellent at selling me. She does have fair qualities and is all smiles with me. The waitress also seems to see through me. She senses my need to try different things, hence the successful stressing of the unique. The woman must be a softrice fan!
The Harushika Tokimeki comes in a generous pour. My good looks have everything to do with it. Prima thought she knew the taste of the sparkling sake, but it is very different from her expectations. This unique sake tastes like pear juice. It has bubbles, but not overly gaseous. This will go down easy for the unseasoned alcoholics. I prefer plum sake. The sparkling sake is fruitier and less sweet by comparison. I need my sweetness in life.
With our entrees swept away and desserts yet to come, Prima and I pose to take pictures together. The first shot, she sticks out her tongue, but I do not. I stick out my tongue for the second shot, while she does not. This is what happens when we do not coordinate beforehand! On our third shot, both of us pout. I have my favorite picture of the night!
When our desserts do arrive, I snap away and immortalize our sugary memories together. Prima smiles at the delightful sight of me taking pictures of our desserts. I told you I had the spirit of a five-year old! I never thought of myself as an oddball, but I always knew I did not fit in with normal people. I do not think I am weird, because I am just how I am. Society does hate me for unapologetically being different though. Kids did not want to play with me during recess or eat with me during lunch. (Thank you, Susanna and lover, for being nice and sweet to me!) Even as grown adults, they are mean to me by ignoring my Facebook messages. All of this is fine, because I am confidently way ahead of those losers in life. I have Prima to dine with me at morimoto! She does not think I am weird, but notice I do things to surprise people that believe I am shy, and then go back to being shy afterward. This is because I am shy by nature. I simply dislike people taking me for granted.
We ordered the two most interesting desserts to share. The first is Tofu ‘Hot and Cold’, soymilk soufflé, tofu cheesecake, and maple ice cream. A circular white dish carries four segregated desserts, under a bamboo leaf just to give the plating color. I thought this would be tofu fa, but it is not, much to our joy.
The tofu cheesecake is the main star of this dessert. It is a white, square slice of cake. There is a layering of flour as the foundation, and thin chocolate barks on top. Prima likes the combination of tastes with the chocolate and tofu cheesecake altogether. I prefer the cake alone.
The tofu ice cream is awesome! It is simple and refreshing, yet unthought-of. The menu lists this as maple ice cream, but we taste tofu in it. The maple is syrup in another container on its lonesome, which makes it easier for us to banish the maple syrup to Siberia. It is overwhelmingly sweet, even when mixed in with the ice cream or soymilk soufflé. Prima and I do not intend to pay extra visits to the dentist for this attention-craving brat of a dessert. We like the good ones.
The soymilk soufflé is a miniature version of the Chinatown paper bag cupcake. Both of us like it, because the dessert reminds us of a familiar taste from childhood. We can still get it. We just do not. The soufflé is soft and fluffy, and in so small a portion, it will always be good.
Our second dessert is the Strawberry Pistachio Cheesecake, strawberry sorbet, and strawberry compote. Prima wanted this dessert because her nickname is Pistachio. I ask her why, and she tells me to translate it into Chinese. Pistachio is happy fruit in our language. I immediately communicate her need for a new nickname, and she says I shrimp her. That is right. I like to shrimp her!
Of the morimoto dessert list, I probably would have chosen the Strawberry Pistachio Cheesecake as well. Lover likes strawberries. The pistachio cheesecake is a thin, yellow rectangular bar in the middle of the square white plate. Halved fresh strawberries line up on top. Blueberries are the bookends, but we do not care about them. A curly chocolate twig touches this part of the dessert and the dark pink strawberry sorbet, connecting the two sweets. The sorbet sits above a ground of crushed pistachio nuts. More green accompanies the sorbet with the mint leaves on top, but the first thing I do is pick it out and throw it aside. I dislike inedible inefficiencies.
This strawberry dessert plays on the extreme comparisons of textures. The pistachio cheesecake is dense, while the strawberry slices are refreshingly light. The strawberry sorbet melts in your mouth, but the crusted pistachio nuts are hard and crunchy. However, both autonomous regions of this dessert make the same mistake. Strawberry and pistachio do not go well together!
Prima and I like the pistachio cheesecake very much. In fact, morimoto makes some good cheesecakes, tofu and pistachio. They should consider opening up a cheesecake bar (like a dessert bar, but exclusively for their cheesecakes). I feel exceptionally proud that this is the first time Prima is having tofu cheesecake and pistachio cheesecake, and both memories now belong to me! The conquering and possessive mentality is a big part of who I am.
The other funny aspect of both desserts is that they have a childhood reminder. With the strawberry pistachio cheesecake, there is an ant hill of Pop Rocks. These popping candy fizzles in your mouth. Prima explains that the popping noise is oxygen releasing from the candy and they will not actually fly out of your mouth. To test my belief that it does, I stick my tongue out with the Pop Rocks flying and hitting Prima’s left cheek. They hit her and hurt her a tiny bit, only to teach her never to underestimate the power of candy. We laugh proving her wrong and me right. Our spirits win together.
Prima jumps up and down from her seat. She is hyper-happy from these delicious desserts. I want this reaction for her food! Prima suggests that if I want time reaction from her every time, I should only bring her out for desserts, such as our time at Spot. I correct her misguided intentions. I am not one to give up after failing once or a thousand times. I will not avoid the grounds that defeated me. I will battle again, and again, collecting experiences from my defeats, until I finally win the war! Prima beams at the resilient might of softrice.
We slaughter our way on the glorious path of dessert consumption and agree to a listing of our favorites. First place is the tofu ice cream. The honorable second is the pistachio cheesecake. Third in line is the tofu cheesecake. Soymilk soufflé may be fourth, but that is only because we can readily get a similar taste in Chinatown. The strawberry sorbet is standard fare, and the maple syrup had the least palate satisfaction works at last placement.
Food: C
Drinks: C
Dessert: C+
Ambiance: C+
Final: C+
Prima and I take an after dessert photograph of us, to commemorate the greatness we can and had achieved together. Yet there were sacrifices for us to accomplish what we did tonight. One dessert we did not order had foam in its menu description. Prima is not a foam girl. She thinks of those Stephen Chow movies, where people are throwing up white foams from their mouths, after being beaten or overdosing on drugs. Oh, how I miss the classic Stephen Chow movies. My favorite Stephen Chow movies are All for the Winner, God of Gamblers II, the Fist of Fury series, the Fight Back to School series, and Love on Delivery. Prima’s favorites are King of Beggars and Flirting Scholar. From our choices, it seems I prefer his modern films, while she prefers his ancient movies. Stephen Chow not making more movies is one of the greatest losses of Chinese culture. No one has a greater influence on my humor, other than Spider-Man.
Prima knows of Spider-Man, but not much more than popular culture. She wants to know how I am like him. Well, with great power comes great responsibility. I feel that if I do not act now to stop the robber, he will go on to kill Uncle Ben. In English, this means I have to do something whenever I have the power to do so, because if I do not, my inaction will come back to irreversibly take away someone or something dear to me. I may not have the heart to do the right thing as a hero does, but I do not want to live a life of guilt and regret as Spider-Man does.
My first televised introduction to Spider-Man was a videocassette of some episodes from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a cartoon series in the early 1980s. His amazing friends were Ice Man and Firestar. They are both cool too, though not as cool as Spider-Man. I suggest Spider-Man, the 1994 animated series, as an easy introduction to the character and his stories. Ultimate Spider-Man is also a great reintroduction of the character for modern readers. I still collect the comic book series. For the casual reader such as Prima, you can read the collected trade paperbacks at your local library or bookstore. A new cartoon series based on Ultimate Spider-Man will release in fall 2011, but I do not know if it is good or not yet. Do not go with the movie trilogy for an understanding of the character.
Spider-Man banters relentlessly as he battles his enemies. This is to hide his insecurity and annoy the bad guys, giving him an edge. His wit also annoys his allies and teammates during fights, and family and friends in casual conversation as Peter Parker. This is probably why I find security in constantly hearing my own voice and chatty on random nonsense. Prima jokingly asks if I want to beat her up when I am saying so much nonsense in our conversations. We laugh to her rhetorical question.
For some reason, we stumble upon talking about the Chinese language, traditional versus simplified. (Prima, please fill my memory gap here.) I can read and write (some) traditional Chinese. I can make out the lookalikes in simplified Chinese, but otherwise, I cannot read or write it. Simplified Chinese is a castration of the great language. I hate it. Prima’s family raised her with the same sentiments, to a lesser severity. When she was a child, Prima asked her aunt about some simplified Chinese characters. The act brought great shame to their house. The aunt goes to the uncle with this tragedy, to which the uncle teaches Prima, this cannot be. Chinese is Chinese. There is no such thing as simplified Chinese! When you castrate a man, he is no longer a man. When you simplify Chinese, it is no longer Chinese. Prima and I are the sentinels of Chinese language, until death do us give quarter.
To practice my Chinese, I am reading more weibos on Sina. I extended my daily reading list to include Rose Chan, Rain Li, Gillian Chung, and Kibby Lau. It does not hurt that they are eye-candies with photo updates as well. No, it does not hurt at all.
Prima and I leave morimoto. On our way out, I grab two of their business cards, next to their matchboxes. This is when I discover Prima likes smelling matches. She takes a couple boxes. I throw her a third and keep the fourth for myself. They are free for the taking anyway.
To keep Prima warm, I offer her a hug, in the dark, empty streets. She prefers to carry me on her back and take us to the nearest cross-town bus stop. I hop on and we are on our way. Less than a street later, I slide off Prima’s back. I do not want it to break. The human scale comments that I have gotten heavier. Yes, the weight loss is coming!
Across the street, we see a building lighted with changing colors on its wall, and a noticeable red sign that says “Don’t Peek”. Prima excitedly yells, “That means it wants us to have a peek.” Off we dash to the keyhole windows below the sign. Prima and I have peeks to what is inside, discovering female mannequins on display with fashionable items such as dresses and handbags for sale.
As we continue our way east, Prima looks down the street and points to a building with an interestingly lighted top floor. I tell her that is the Boom Boom Room of the Standard Hotel, an exclusive nightclub at the top floor of a luxury boutique hotel. It seems I have random bits of city knowledge to offer her.
With no bus in sight as we wait at the stop, Prima climbs atop a hill of snow to check the bus schedule. It is not as if the buses come on time anyway. Nevertheless, Prima determines that we should patiently wait for the next one, instead of walking all the way to the closest theater. She does not want to walk such a distance in the cold.
While waiting for the bus, I make a valiant attempt at picking up Prima. With an ounce of my super strength, I succeed! She finds it funny that I am holding her up high and starts to wiggle in midair. The movements do not loosen my steady grip. Yet it is funnier when she speaks, because I can feel the air moving in and out of her stomach. This is what pregnancy must feel like, without the blood and pain.
When the bus does arrive, I put Prima down. She turns to me with a sudden worry that I might not have a MetroCard. I actually have a monthly MetroCard nowadays, so it is unlimited rides for me. However, I offer that even if I did not have a MetroCard, I could pay the $1.50 with cash. Prima laughs and brings me to the present pricing of $2.25. We clearly see how long I have not taken a bus.
We take a bus and get off at Regal Union Square Stadium 14. I really want to see Thor, which stars Natalie Portman, but that comes out in the summer. (I have never been interested in her before this.) To get my kick of Natalie in the meanwhile, I figured I could go see her in No Strings Attached. Knowing I only want to see her for seeing her, Prima suggested we could see her other, more critically acclaimed film, Black Swan. She says it is about ballet (the modern day equivalent of foot binding), so we thought it would be just another chick flick about the hardships of dancing. I foolishly agreed and stepped towards a house of unimaginable horrors!
Prima and I keep our individual movie stubs as a memento. She likes to keep it too! I am worth remembering and keeping dear to the heart, I know this. We enter the theater and find our preferred seats. Prima takes off her boots to get comfortable. She does not wear shoes when she is watching movies. Waiting through the commercials, Prima pulls out a morimoto matchbox to sniff. I ask her what it smells like, to which she responds by stating it smells like sulfur. Curious for the sensory, I motion for a whiff, but Prima pulls the matchbox away from me. She warns that it is unhealthy and protects me from trying it. My companion satisfies her addiction because she likes the smell. I, on the other hand, do not need to harm myself on such an unnecessary addiction.
Refocusing our attention to the commercials, Prima asks what I think of a blonde. She thinks the unknown actress is pretty. I respond with disinterest and comment that she is not pretty. My answer results in Prima asserting that I am picky. Only the best are fit to bless my divine pair of eyes, for it is a herculean labor to distract my sight from my heavenly lover.
With our mistaken forecast on what Black Swan is about, the beginnings of the movie is just weird to us. Midway through the feature, we pieced together that the story is not about a New York City ballet dancer, but a schizophrenic aspiring artist. By then, it was too late to run out of the theater. Before I came to see Black Swan, I heard from coworkers, buddies, and reviewers that it is a good movie. Yet not one of them bothered to mention that it was a scary movie about crazy people!
Do not go see Black Swan. I had the living daylights scared out of me. Natalie did a number of steamy and sexually provocative scenes. Sadly, I cannot consciously select these scenes to focus on, remember, and replay. My erections are frightened back into winter hibernation by the powerful horror scenes. Fear is the dominating emotion that rules this moment. Lover calls me her maker of the impossible possible. This is usually a positive association, but few people care to realize this means I consider all possibilities, including dark ones. Before I finish seeing the movie, it means anything can still happen, so I invite damage not only from the scripted horror scenes, but also from all the grotesque possibilities continuously imagined and considered by my mind. I can only lose this battle.
I rather watch Natalie do straight out porn. No Strings Attached may be the inferior story, but I only need my cliché plotlines in a light comedy to pass the night. A light comedy will do me wonders over the Black Swan challenging my mental sanity.
The other aspect of weird in the Black Swan is its incongruous mixture of tugs on different strings. Apart from the scary scenes, the film has equal spots for sex and comedy. I do not know how to do fright, arousal, and funny, regardless if the movie scenes draw this trio of emotions simultaneously or rotationally from me. I can only hold one feeling throughout the movie. For the Black Swan, it is fear.
I will not open the (mental) doors of fear for lover (and my fans) reading this. On sex and laughter, the funniest scene is Natalie masturbating. She wakes up one morning, remembering the teacher telling her to experiment, experience, and enjoy touching herself. Natalie reaches down to her vagina and initiates pleasure with her right hand. With her sexual interest soon stimulated, she flips around, sticks her ass high, and spreads her legs open, while continuing her handy tricks. As Natalie was reaching her climax, she slides to a sideway position facing the left, and then shockingly opens her eyes to see her mother sleeping on a chair by her bedside. Prima and the audience erupt into laughter. A pointless porn movie would have been better than this terrifying story for my mental health.
Another sex scene I cannot replay in my head to drown out this insightfulness into the world of crazy is the lesbian sex scene between Natalie and Milia Kunis. As Milia is working her oral magic on Natalie’s pink taco, Prima whispers her additional, yummy sound effects into my right ear, “Om nom”. Thank you, Prima! She proceeds to wonder if it is awkward watching this with me. I offer her the comforting fact that I am not a girl, to which Prima confirms she would feel more awkward watching this with a girl. A piece of irony on my part is I have always wanted to watch lesbian sex with a girl, although I had something different in mind. The humor of this scene comes in the next scene, where we find out this was all Natalie’s wet dream, and Milia asks was she good at least.
As enjoyable as the scene reads, I only feared for what might come next. The girls may be ripping their clothes off, but I was afraid of possible brutal mutilations forthcoming. Additionally, Natalie hides and fidgets with a metal crowbar in multiple scenes. I worried for when she might beat her controlling mother to a senseless death. Both possibilities never happened in the film, but my mind enacted the scenes and inserted their playing whenever I found appropriate openings in the script. Halfway through the plot weaving, I knew the story could lead to nowhere good. I only wanted the movie to end sooner so that I can leave, with immediacy!
Recounting the funny scenes, Prima list the scene where the teacher teaches Natalie the seduction dance of the black swan. You can see her nipples, under a skintight ballet dress. She is also very skinny, especially when you see her spine. As the two dances, he reaches down to her vagina and entices her. Then he tightly squeezes her oranges, as they multi-task with the dancing and kissing. Once Natalie is lost along the seduction, the teacher abruptly stops and declares this as him seducing her. He needs it to be the other way around, where she is seducing him. That is the point of the dance. With his point made, he walks away. The reaction from the audience is, oh poop! This scene was not funny. It just demonstrates the wrongness pervasively found in life.
After the movie ends, Prima and I debate what really happened and what did not happen. The conclusion leaves these subplots open-ended. Did Natalie have sex with a man instead of Milia, or was it all a wet dream? Is she a lesbian or bi-sexual? (I think she is a lesbian. Why else would you fantasize about having sex with another girl? Prima thinks she has feelings for the teacher. The lesbian sex was her experimentalism with sexuality, and drugs.) Did Natalie kill her predecessor or was that all in her head too?
A trademark characteristic of crazy is the inability to differentiate between reality and hallucination. Black Swan successfully brings viewers into this mindset. Yet when you dive deep into the world of the crazy, the risk is going crazy yourself. The movie does not help bring you back into what was its reality. People readily want to dismiss what did not happen as things that are not real. Yet they often neglect to realize that the feelings we go through are very real, regardless if the events happen in a shared reality or in our heads. When Natalie believed she murdered her successor, her anxiety was real. (Her calm reaction to clean up and hide the bloody mess also makes her a real murderer, even if she did not kill.) The personal Hell I imprisoned myself in is real too. We are helpless victims before the tortures of our own inflicting.
Prima likes Black Swan. She thinks it is a good movie because she can relate to Natalie. Both of them are perfectionists. Natalie went crazy, wanting to be perfect, and died to perform the perfect dance. I am a perfectionist too, but an unfaithful one. I can live with imperfections (but not without beauty). It was not worth her life to give a transformative and infectious black swan dance. I cannot even tell the difference between her perfect finale dance and the imperfect dance practices that came before it.
I worry for Prima, because she can relate to Natalie. You can only relate to crazy when you can think crazy, as you can only understand loss when you have experienced tragedy. It is not for the best when you can relate to everything.
Prima and I relate because we shared experiences of falling. Hers was worst than mine, only in the sense that I did not come close to crying myself blind. I have the stronger ability to cry with my vision intact, so far. I do not want Prima to hurt herself or sacrifice her life to be a perfectionist at something trivial. (To give your life for softrice is a different matter.) I may be a master manipulator, but my abilities are only good for destructive purposes. I have no confidence in utilizing the same abilities to heal the mind. Yet maybe my fear is baseless. After all, Prima was able to save herself by thinking things through on her own. I was lucky to have lover save me, which means I never developed the ability to think things through.
Black Swan gives you a lot to think about introspectively. I reflect upon how I want to approach my identity. The thought arises from an unwillingness to date someone crazy like Natalie, even if the girl is as pretty. Turn the thought around and I have the reason why people keep their distance from me. I am too different for normal people to understand me, so it is better to be safe and stay away. Of course, me being the crazy person can say I am only misunderstood and waiting for someone as special as lover to make sense of my madness. Then am I not special enough to understand Natalie? Can I ever bring myself to believe such blasphemy in that the Prince of Heaven is not special enough? The two sides of the argument make me question whether I should lower my insanity levels to be more attractive. Yet the thought of reducing my genius to fit in with normal thinking people is despicable. What is the right thing to do?
The 29-year old Israeli-American vegan also got a lot from filming Black Swan. Professionally, Natalie won the Best Actress Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. On her personal life, she met Benjamin Millepied, the ballet choreographer of Black Swan. They are engaged and expecting a first child now. Natalie will remember Black Swan as a positive turning point for the rest of her life. I want to forget ever seeing the movie as soon as possible. Natalie can return favorably in my life as Jane Foster in Thor.
Prima feels awful for bringing me to see such a scary movie. We first search for a place to play ping-pong (thinking games would make me forget the disturbing scenes replaying in my head) and then search for fries (she was craving them). The only thing we found was a Caucasian bum sleeping inside the ATM area of a Bank of America, with his pants off, exposing innocent onlookers to his moon. This was a sign to call it a night and go home. We will play again next time.
I want to see Prima get in a taxi, while she wants to see me take the subway, before we each part the other. Prima is afraid the bottom-half naked bum at the Bank of America will come molest my handsomeness in the middle of the night! After all, I am only a psychological powerhouse, while she is the physical prowess in our partnership. Without allowing my male pride to go to shame, I convince Prima to hop on a taxi and be on her way before I depart. Then I make my way down and through the subway tunnels for a ride home.
Once we get home, Prima texts me a suggestion to watch an episode of the Simpsons, Family Guy, or Super Trio to forget Black Swan. She additionally wishes me sweet dreams and to sleep tight. I have a better solution to erase the horrors of tonight. I am going to watch the video message from Linda Chung to all her fans, wishing us good health and happiness for Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day, and telling us not to worry about her, because she will be happy when we are happy and she is always happy. I go to sleep, dream of lover, and become a god without fear.
Always in a puff of smoke,
softrice
